Packing up and moving on. Time to stop posting on this particular blog. Many thanks for reading and commenting. I will be setting up another blog from my new address within the month (using Bagnall in the title). Adios!

Old School Sign Writing. I've had a couple of sign-writing commissions lately. From these photos of a church sign in progress readers will see I like to follow old methods: lay-out in chalk, lettering in enamel paint, painted with a sable brush. My only concession to modernity is the font style which I initially print out from my laptop. Old craftsmen would snap their Mahl Sticks in disgust!

Modernist Catholic Churches. These concrete and clear line edifices all date from the late 50s to the turn of the 70s and are from the Archdiocese of Cincinatti. Their mammoth size and confident style all testify to a boom time for American Catholicism when Mass attendance was huge and vocations to the priesthood were at an all time peak. Even new convents were being built at this time. Unthinkable now, when (in the West at least) the thought of a religious vocation is not considered a marketable option.

Here is an overdue posting of vintage shop signs photographed on my holiday to Malta. All of these flaking and crumbling beauties were seen in the lovely capital city Valletta. The majority of these fascia stood above vacant businesses so I suppose some will be disappearing shortly.

Happy to announce that from Tuesday 17th March I will be on holiday in Malta. This Mediterranean island has 365 churches and its Cathedral in Valletta is home to Caravaggio's painting of The Beheading of John the Baptist, a gloomy baroque picture I have long wanted to see in situ. As this is the third week in Lent it is too early to see any splendid religious festas in Malta but I hope to soak up the island's devout Catholic culture and also some early spring sunshine.

Pub Signs. These foam-board signs were commisssioned from me by my niece Sarah and her fiancee Craig for their wedding which took place last Sunday. Why pub signs? On their evening "do" they held a pub quiz with team leaders each representing a fictional pub. These signs swung from wooden posts in eight sections of the real pub. The winning team (my sister Elaine's) received cup trophies. Oh and there was fish and chips too. Congratulations Sarah and Craig!

The January Wall. Here's how my office wall looks lately, what with the New Year and all that. One visitor said there is no cohesion between my varied pictures and artefacts - the display is rather mixed up. Make your own decision - how many of us are singular in our interests anyway?

The wall-hangings left to right are:

1. Crucifix bought for me from Catholic Truth Society circa 1980 by girlfriend of that time.

2. Print of the first Broons Annual cover from the late 1930's.

3. Fantastic Four Jack Kirby print from Marvel Comics website.

4. Report from Newcastle Evening Chronicle about new Bishop-elect, Seamus Cunningham of Hexham and Newcastle Diocese.

5. Cover by Steve Ditko of Amazing Spiderman Number 33, early 1960s.

6. "Punk's Not Dead" 2009 Calendar reduced to £1.99 in sales. Current picture of Glen Matlock is OK, but could prove shameful when June's picture of Boomtown Rat's Bob Geldof is on show.

7. Page (not original) from a 1930's Lord Snooty strip illustrated by Dudley Watkins.

8. Plaque bought from Lourdes during 2008 depicting Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

9. Official Broons 2009 Calendar bought from The Sunday Post.

The British High Street. As 2008 draws its last few breaths I'm probably not the only one to reflect on how the recession has hit us so quickly and so hard. Small shops are disappearing and of the big chain stores its not only Woolies which has kicked the bucket. The outlook is so gloomy that soon we may only have out of town supermarkets in which to spend our credit-crunch pennies.

Above street scene is an unpublished drawing from a couple of years ago.

His Glory will appear in your midst.

Happy Christmas to all my friends. Regular posting will return in the new year when things shouldn't be so hectic!

Treasure Chest Comic 1946-1972. This educational comic book was published in the USA by George A Pflaum and provided (free?) to Catholic parochial school students during the above years.Treasure Chest's solid pre-Vatican II dogma expressed in strip form must have been intended as a moral antidote to the horror and superhero comics which were exerting an unholy grip on America's youth.

Despite these clear digital archive scans you can't help but smell the musty whiff of cheap newsprint, eye the glow of a yellowed patina and somehow hear the echo of classes of schoolchildren collectively chanting the answers to the Baltimore Catholic Catechism.

Vegetable box art. In the quest for the unsophisticated and the unintentionally odd in graphic design I offer these examples of fruit shop cardboard boxes. I had to snap these screenprinted goodies with my roving camera. First is a broccoli box from Channel Farm, Kinross. As this produce is from Scotland I was happy to read the slogan "Builds Braw Bodies". But can anyone tell me why has the boxes designer included an illustration of a braw female body who looks like Marsha Hunt circa 1969, complete with frizzy afro hairstyle and psychedelic bell-bottoms? And how about the cauliflower box also above? No self-respecting Mac carrying designer would dare go for the anthropomorphic angle these days but here we have a cauli with not only a hideous grin but also disturbingly long eyelashes. I hope this vegetable countenance never visits me in a future nightmare...

Dudley D Watkin's Young Warrior Comic Strips. Easily my favourite British cartoonist and revered illustrator of Desperate Dan, Lord Snooty, The Broons and Oor Wullie, Dudley D Watkins also had a lesser known artistic sideline producing Christian tract strips for the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade during the 1950s and 1960s. Watkins was a highly religious man and always kept a huge Bible near his drawing board. His Bible had wide margins in which he would scribble copious notes when inspiration took hold. Watkin's place of worship was the Dundee Church of Christ, a Free Protestant community where he met his wife.

From 1956 he drew and wrote William the Warrior, a schoolboy character much given to scripture quotations and musing on moral dilemmas. Later he created Tony & Tina, the Warrior Twins (see above) for the Young Warrior Christian Children's Paper. These strips were collected and published in booklets during 1966 and 1969.

Czech Signwriting. I've just returned from my second visit to the city of 1000 spires and cabbage soup, Prague. I don't think I will ever tire of Prague's endlessly fascinating streets, fine gloomy Baroque churches and dusty antique shops, this September in unseasonably nippy temperatures.

These elegant examples of signwriting painted directly onto the building's stonework caught my eye. Somehow the letter style couldn't be from anywhere else but the Czech Republic.

Traditional Catholic Visualism. I've been spending far too much precious time lately lapping up the resplendent photographs on the excellent Hallowed Ground picture blog. Here is an inspired and carefully chosen celebration of the liturgical grandeur that was the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. It has taken many a year to recover from that cultural rupture which (indirectly) brought us a neo-Protestant mistrust of the visual in church worship. Other woeful Vatican II by-products in Catholic liturgy have been banal, folksy hymns and a mood of jamboree rather than awe at the sacred mysteries being represented.

For myself, hopes for the future and continuity with the past include going to Thursday evening Mass last week at Sacred Heart & English Martyrs Church, Co. Durham and witnessing Fr. Dickson process to the sanctuary wearing a black biretta on his head exactly like the above unknown circa World War I cleric.

Beano Summer Special Comics. I'm almost certain my Dad bought me copies of these Summer Specials (dated 1972, 1973 and 1975) during holidays in Wales, Yorkshire and the Lakes. In my early teens I remember reading mainly American Marvel and DC comics. But I also recall with a good deal of affection these DC Thomson goodies, printed in semi-gloss paper in tabloid size. There are many references here to venerable British Butlins style holidays in these jolly old pages. Steam Trains, Striped Blazers, Straw Boaters and School Teacher's Mortar Boards also crop up. Did we ever come across such delightful anachronisms in Captain America or The Avengers?